Two items dominate the news today. The first and occupying the most time on television and space in the printed media are the “leaks” from the CIA that it believes Russian hacked the DNC and provided WikiLeaks with the emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton’s campaign and caused so many voters to support Trump. Presumably the Russians got the FBI to call attention to Hillary’s posting classified information on her internet servers which also influenced many voters. And no doubt the Russians were responsible for the turnout of more than 60 million voters who voted for Trump. My own view as a person who served as Executive Officer of a B-17 Bomb Squadron which conducted nearly 200 missions over Germany during World War II, is that Russian intelligence if it did not try to help defeat an American administration that got its Baltic neighbors to join in a military pact aimed at Russia and which helped overthrow a government in the Ukraine, Russia’s neighbor. a nation to whom Russia had granted territory housing Russia’s major naval base on its Southwestern, would be derelict in its duty to defend Russia’s interests. Russia has no reason to believe that Trump will change U.S. policy other than the fact that Trump has indicated a willingness to treat Russia civilly as Presidents G.W. Bush and Barack Obama did not.

The CIA has a history of intrusions in domestic politics and in the internal affairs of other independent nations to affect elections and overthrow governments. One could argue that is its duty to promote the interests of the U.S. abroad whatever the means. The CIA brought down a Republican President once before by leaking information that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency. This is public knowledge and the CIA official who did the leaking bragged about it. It is accused trying to prevent the election of Netanyahu in Israel. It helped to arm the rebels and overthrow the government of Libya. It brought about the dissolution of Yugoslavia, whose civil war destroyed thousands of lives, and replaced a strong government with governments beholden to Germany and Italy and weak and dependent on continued foreign assistance. It armed the rebels and tried to overthrow the government of Syria, with the unintended consequence of enabling Russia to gain influence in the Middle East. The CIA’s misinformation led Pres. G.W. Bush to invade Iraq, which destabilized the Middle East, the U.S. more than a trillion dollars, enabled the rise of ISIS and killed thousands of innocent civilians. The CIA should be dismantled and disbursed among other civilian and military intelligence agencies that have a much better record.

Among the other news items of the day is the success of the Syrian government with the help of the Russians to regain control of one of its major cities, Aleppo. The CIA which was largely responsible for the rebels’ conquest of Aleppo, may be using the accusation of Russia’s trivial possible involvement in the presidential election by leaking information that benefited President-Elect Trump to hide its own ineptitude.

[An] extensive argument for balanced trade, and a program to achieve balanced trade is presented in Trading Away Our Future, by Raymond Richman, Howard Richman and Jesse Richman. “A minimum standard for ensuring that trade does benefit all is that trade should be relatively in balance.” [Balanced Trade entry]

Journal of Economic Literature:

[Trading Away Our Future] Examines the costs and benefits of U.S. trade and tax policies. Discusses why trade deficits matter; root of the trade deficit; the “ostrich” and “eagles” attitudes; how to balance trade; taxation of capital gains; the real estate tax; the corporate income tax; solving the low savings problem; how to protect one’s assets; and a program for a strong America....

Atlantic Economic Journal:

In Trading Away Our Future Richman ... advocates the immediate adoption of a set of public policy proposal designed to reduce the trade deficit and increase domestic savings.... the set of public policy proposals is a wake-up call... [February 17, 2009 review by T.H. Cate]